1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a printer shared by a plurality of computers and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for providing a printing environments therein.
2. Description of the Related Art
A single repeater connects a single printer to a plurality of computers in order to serve as an interface the computers and the single printer, a sharer sequentially transmits data transmitted from the computers to the printer according to priority, and the printer receives the sequentially transmitted data. The data transmitted from the computers, includes user identification (hereinafter, referred to as user ID) according to a user of the computers, printing data, and printing environment data. Herein, printing environment data includes information such as the size of printing papers, printing density, resolution, and the number of the printing papers. Also, the user ID is used to identify the user in the networking computer environment formed by the plurality of the computers.
An example of a system in which a plurality of computers shares a single printer is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 5,541,582 to Richard H. Wagner, et al. entitled Apparatus For Data Communication Switching. In contemporary practice in the art, when the user transmits data to the printer in order to perform a printing operation, the user transmits his user identification (i.e., the user ID), the printing environment data, and the printing data. Thus, each time the user wants to perform the printing operation, the printing environment data must be transmitted to the printer again. The repeater receives the data transmitted from the computers and then provides the data to the printer according to a predetermined priority. The printer checks the user ID, uses the accompanying printing environment data to set the printing environment, and then print an image corresponding to the printing data. I have found however, that contemporary practice in the art suffers from the inconvenience attributable to the need for the user to always provide data for setting the printing environment to the printer prior to initiating a printing operation.